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Weak Popularity Domain

It represents a domain with limited but detectable user traffic or DNS activity. While it might belong to small legitimate services, threat actors also leverage such domains early in their campaigns before reputation systems can classify them.

Also surfaces as:
Poor Popularity DomainVery Poor Popularity Domain
Analyst Q&A

What this signal answers

The questions every analyst asks before acting on this signal.

What it detects01

What does 'Weak Popularity Domain' mean in SOC analysis?

It represents a domain with limited but detectable user traffic or DNS activity. While it might belong to small legitimate services, threat actors also leverage such domains early in their campaigns before reputation systems can classify them.

Why it matters02

What characterizes a 'Poor Popularity Domain'?

These domains show minimal and inconsistent access patterns. They are often short-lived, used in phishing or malware delivery, and rarely indexed by search engines. The lack of sustained visibility or backlinks makes them suspicious when correlated with other threat indicators.

How analysts use it03

What does 'Very Poor Popularity Domain' indicate from a threat intelligence perspective?

It refers to domains with near-zero legitimate traffic or presence, often newly registered or reactivated after long inactivity. In SOC operations, such domains are considered high-risk due to their frequent use in disposable or single-purpose malicious infrastructure.

Often paired with:alert_only
Evidence shape

What Weak Popularity Domain looks like in the response

A realistic shape of the entry the engine appends to the risk_signals array when this signal fires. Evidence keys are subgroup-default; per-signal overrides documented in the API reference.

json
{
  "slug": "bad_popularity",
  "name": "Weak Popularity Domain",
  "group": "popularity_and_backlink",
  "subgroup": "popularity_score",
  "direction": "malicious",
  "evidence": {
    "tranco_rank": 482103,
    "tranco_rank_band": "100k-1m",
    "organic_traffic_band": "low",
    "regional_rank_top_country": "US"
  }
}
See in API reference
Siblings

Peers in Popularity Score

9 other signals share the same subgroup. They detect related behaviors and often co-fire on the same IOC.

High-Reputation Domain

It refers to globally recognized, high-traffic domains with verified ownership and a long operational history, such as g…

SafeCore
Emerging Link Farm Pattern

A domain that is reachable from many distinct sources (high harmonic centrality) yet none of those sources carry meaning…

Malicious
Newly Broadly Reachable

It represents a domain that receives links from a large number of distinct sources (high harmonic centrality) but whose …

Safe
Newly Niche-Authoritative

A domain that is referenced by a small number of sources (mid or tail harmonic centrality) but those sources carry stron…

Safe
Show 5 more in Popularity Score

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